There is no Phantom of the Opera
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: Raoul's thoughts go round and round as he follows Christine up to the roof of the Opera... but he is sure of one thing at least.


Raoul-Achille-Honoré — youngest and most recent of the Vicomtes de Chagny — was not given to flights of fancy. A trifle impetuous maybe, perhaps even as naïve as his scoffing friends liked to claim, but for all his youth he was a man grown, an educated man in a world of rational thought, and he did not believe in ghosts. In particular, not ghosts that laid claim to such very tangible possessions as an opera box or twenty thousand francs in cash... or that, bare minutes ago, had looped an all-too-solid rope around a man's neck and thrust him into that ghastly dance of death as a warning.

Christine's face had been ashen at the sight, and he'd choked down horror of his own; but she'd needed him, and he'd rushed unhesitatingly to her side. He would have offered her the comfort of his arms — of his home, if she would have it — but she'd caught at his hand, drawing him instead into this wild flight.

The stairs around them went on and on, climbing narrower and narrower, more and more bare with every passing moment like a dream without end. The tail of her cloak slipped away and away in front of him without a halt for question or for breath, and all he could do was follow Christine Daaé. He would follow to the ends of the world at her bidding, he knew that now — and, if he could, for the rest of his life.

They'd sat side by side as children, curled up beneath the shadows of old wardrobes and broken night-tables in the attic that had become their private refuge, reading her father's old books by the light of a pilfered candle while the violin sang softly below and the rain fell steadily on the tiles above. In memory now it was a summer of rain and dreams; of Christine's small hand clutched warmly in his own as they shivered together at the tales of trollhome and river-sprite, of the world-tree and the one-eyed king, and all the petty spirits of field and wood and byre.

Yet he'd known even then — and so too, surely, had she — that these were _stories_. Long ago and far away in the great mountains of the North, perhaps such things had come to pass (or so in those boyhood days he had half-believed). But in the outside world of trams and insurance and streetlights they were no more real than Perrault's fairy-tales.

God and the angels no longer walked the earth. Whatever celestial power had reached down to grant Christine her voice, Raoul did not believe for one moment that this gift could go so far as to provide individual tuition in her dressing room. Either someone was playing a cruel trick on Christine or — it dawned on him shame-faced — Meg Giry and the ballet corps, among whom that rumour was rife, were playing a trick on _him_...

Everyone who was anybody in Paris had to be seen at the theatre. Raoul's parents had taken him when he was ten, stiff and over-awed in his velvet suit with strict instructions not to interrupt Mama and the grown-ups. He'd been as fascinated by the bright clothes and chatter in the audience as by the spectacle on the stage, and the stabbing in the last act had been almost worth the wait. By the time he'd met Christine and her father, years later, it had been long enough for him to look back and laugh.

Christine, of course, had been watching her father go off each night to play his violin since she was small, and the two of them were full of backstage stories that had held Raoul at fourteen enthralled. Ever since that summer, he'd never taken the musicians in the pit quite so much for granted again... and once or twice he'd thought he'd glimpsed old Daaé. But the violin section could not be seen from their family's box, at least not unless one leaned right out in a precipitous manner, and after the second occasion his father's glare had dissuaded him from even making the attempt.

Still, he'd always remembered the old man's anecdotes of operas and the concert hall, and flattered himself, as he grew older, that those little glimpses behind the scenes lent him a certain privileged insight that none of his friends could share. And when his father had taken up an interest in the Opera Populaire this last winter, it was Raoul who had jumped at the chance to represent the family and meet the new managers himself.

He hadn't really thought he'd renew acquaintance with Christine's father, who'd long since faded to little more than a dim benign memory of boyhood. But it had never for one moment crossed his mind that he might encounter Christine herself — Christine, whom he'd remembered with an aching bright nostalgia that had never quite left — Christine, whose childish treble had ripened to a glorious soaring soprano that could call down the hosts of heaven without ever losing its sweet purity of tone.

Everybody who was anybody in Paris attended at the opera, and Raoul, who actually enjoyed music, had been quite as often as most. Until these last few weeks he had never been backstage. But he'd had a fair idea already of the hectic atmosphere of superstition, pranks, rivalries and loyalties that reigned there. Christine had spent almost all her time with Meg Giry before he, Raoul, had come into the scene. He could not help wondering now whether this whole business might not be some elaborate leg-pull designed to put the interloper in his place.

But no — Christine at least would never lend herself to such a thing, above all if it meant sullying her father's memory. At fourteen, she had believed implicitly in the Angel of Music whose unseen touch could confer the breath of genius upon a lucky, talented few; Raoul told himself he'd known all along it had only ever been a metaphor, of course, but rueful memory showed him a boy equally caught up in Christine's fervent belief.

He'd grown up, though, and so had she: grown indeed to womanhood in a way of which he was far more conscious nowadays than he had been that night. How could he have dreamed that when she spoke of an angel's visit she'd believed in an all too literal presence? And who could have guessed that six scant weeks later the old friend he'd greeted with such simple delight at rediscovery would have so completely overthrown his heart?

He'd had no thought of courtship or the proprieties when he'd burst in backstage to congratulate her, as impetuous and gauche as the boy who'd flung himself into deep water after the vanishing wisp of a scarf. He'd been proud of her — excited to see her — ready to celebrate. And the hug of greeting she'd flung around him had been the same eager embrace she'd given him when last they parted, artless and utterly innocent of artifice.

They'd been boy and girl together, but it had never been a boy-and-girl affair. Raoul had been of an age to be impatient and embarrassed by dawning coyness in the other sex and feminine obsession with romance. Even at fourteen, there were girls who were ready to set their caps at _'monsieur le vicomte'_ and the catch he represented — but not Christine. She'd given him open-hearted friendship without a thought of allure, the confiding loyalty of a shy child, and won his own quick liking in return. And he'd never for a moment thought of her as like those other girls at all.

When he'd come to her dressing-room to celebrate her triumph, it hadn't been a visit to an old flame, but to _Christine_. He'd had every intention of taking her out to dinner, of toasting her success and of hearing all her news in exchange for his own. But back then, when he'd received an armful of scantily-clad warm girl it had simply been with reciprocal delight at their reunion and little more heed than the thought that she'd have to change out of her dressing-gown before they could leave.

He hadn't set out with the idea of seeking a bride at the Opera — that would have been absurd. He certainly hadn't come here to seduce her, whatever Messrs Firmin and André might see fit to insinuate. (He was, perhaps, naïve in such matters; he was not blind or deaf to their implications.) Yet somehow, in the weeks that had passed, he'd found himself head over heels in love with Christine Daaé.

At seventeen, he'd written bad poetry to the eyes of a Russian princess who'd smiled at him one day in his mother's drawing-room. At nineteen he'd conceived an embarrassing passion for a _grande dame_ who'd reduced him to tongue-tied stammering every time she swept past. He'd been laughed at by his friends, flirted with at dances, but never touched in anything deeper than his adolescent self-esteem.

He'd thought of love as languishing ladies in operas, purple prose in three-decker novels, polished strophes from Ovid or Catullus. It hadn't dawned on him until he was lost deep, deep within its grasp that all the old poems could be true, and that love could happen to real people... like himself and Christine.

"I suppose," his father had observed wearily, with an air of tolerant experience that stung Raoul to the quick, "that she is very beautiful?"

Raoul supposed, almost with surprise, that she was; but then so was Carlotta, with her brazen poise and her creamy throat. So was Meg Giry, with her little heart-shaped face, and her slender waist and guinea-gold curls, if one had a taste for such things; so too were Catherine Lanarchier and her sister, who'd left a trail of broken hearts behind them among the _haut ton_ last summer before the inevitable rich marriage.

He'd seen beautiful women before. He'd never felt like this about any of them. He did not think he could ever feel like this for anyone but Christine.

She'd begun to haunt his dreams, elusive and beyond his experience so that every time he woke before his mouth could meet hers; morning came as a relief after broken nights, with its knowledge that in the hours to come he would see her again. He spent every moment that he could with her every day, ignoring alike the giggles of the ballet corps and the managers' knowing looks.

His mind's gallery held a thousand images of her now, stored up for the times they were apart: Christine in a little café, smiling at him as she lifted the lemon from her tea; Christine preoccupied as she studied a score, with a single soft tendril of hair brushing her cheek; Christine running ahead of him around the opera's wide gallery, full of laughter and heedless of skirts or dignity or disapproving eyes. In some ways it was as if they'd never been apart. In other ways... it was so much more.

He didn't know when it had begun, for him. Or even if it had ever begun or had been there all along without his knowing it. He only knew that he had jumped up to meet a friend, had stumbled into a mystery, and had found himself woven day by day deeper into the life of the Opera, all because Christine was there.

Hearts did ache, he'd learned, with a queer little knot of longing high beneath the breastbone that twisted clean over when their eyes met and her face lit up. She was glad to see him. She was glad to be in his company. She flushed up with a quick, fugitive colour, sometimes, when her ungloved hand brushed his and his own pulse lurched and dropped as if the floor had fallen away beneath them.

But she said nothing, and so he said nothing; and only the rush and ebb of blood betrayed that they were not children together any longer.

He could not get her out of his mind. It was not that she was perfection, for he could see very well that she was not. He could have named a great store of flaws along with every other little thing about her, and each filled him with more tenderness than the last.

The unabashed guile with which the last cream-cake would vanish when Christine was anywhere in the vicinity. The telltale way one finger crept up to touch her lip when she resorted to childish fibs or evasions in the face of Reyer's strictures or La Carlotta's malice. The beading of sweat that caked powder and paint into flakes along her upper lip as she stood in the wings, and stained the tawdry colours of her costumes. The little dark mole high on her shoulder of which she was acutely conscious and forever trying to hide... but when she forgot to tug at the neckline of her dresses, there it was again, peeping out amid the downy hairs of her nape with a wilful enchantment that begged to be covered with kisses and reassured.

The threadbare darns in her gloves and the yellowed lace of kerchief or tucker were the steadfast shabbiness of a girl who earned her own living and was beholden to no-one. And Raoul, who would willingly have swept her off her feet and clad her from head to toe in cloth-of-gold and spun silver — or at least in the most elegant outfits that Paris could provide — was left helpless in the face of convention to do anything but learn by heart every stitch in her old grey practice-dress, and promise himself that one day they would be married and she would never lack for anything ever again.

He couldn't get her out of his mind. And every little human imperfection only made him long all the more to wrap her in his arms and love her and laugh them all away.

Raoul's rational self did not need his father to tell him that this degree of obsession was a state of complete madness, a sweet, delirious dream that could not in the nature of things last. One could not tremble at a woman's touch for forty years, or be consumed by dreams of her without end. But if some day he was bound to find himself with snuff-box and slippers laid ready by the fire, shaking his head over the extravagant follies of his youth... then he wanted it to be Christine with whom he shared that fond smile across the hearth; Christine grown as sweet and round and wrinkled as a winter apple, and her eyes warm with a lifetime of memories lived side by side.

~o~

"Raoul? Raoul—"

That image had been so vivid before him that he came to himself with almost a shock to find her peeping anxiously back at him from the stairwell above. Lost in his thoughts, he had fallen further and further behind, and now they were in a part of the Opera House he did not recognise at all, a narrow staircase between boarded walls, like the steep bare treads leading to some servants' attic.

He reached for her hand, and caught only the edge of her cloak as she whirled back round, ready to resume their breakneck flight.

"Christine, wait! Where—"

"To the roof!" Her hand found his for a moment, small and damp with urgency as she tugged, and protest died on his lips as her fingers answered the pressure of his own. She drew them briefly to her cheek, eyes full of tears, and Raoul's heart turned over.

And then just like that she was gone, with her breath like a kiss left burning across his touch and through every fibre of his being, and he was utterly lost to all else.

He would give the world to make her happy and drive the constant ghost of fear from her eyes. They had seen murder done tonight — vile murder in support of extortion and lunatic demands — and his own horror at that still caught in his throat. But Christine had been afraid long since, with a deeper, less rational dread that ebbed when they were together but never quite left her, even when she laughed.

The ballet girls liked to frighten one another with tales of faceless malice, or ghosts to be propitiated to ensure a good performance and blamed for all that went wrong. Raoul had become a connoisseur of backstage gossip in the last few weeks and knew just how preposterous some of those giggling stories could be.

Christine did not giggle. Christine, to whom dreams had always been almost as vivid as waking, _believed_ ; and unlike the others, she would not speak of it, not even to him.

Nor did she make any further mention of the Angel of Music, though Raoul himself had tried to slip in such allusions more than once. It was as if she had suddenly shrunk from the subject — or else, Raoul thought ruefully, that given his own lack of belief she was simply shutting him out. But he would gladly have shared her faith in that guardian angel if it could give her recourse against the demons that haunted her now.

There was no all-powerful spirit haunting the Opera House. There was no monster with flaming eyes who could penetrate the minds of men and send down thunderbolts of retribution upon those who neglected their art. And there was no Phantom who could whisk away his victims to his ghoulish lair in a stab of hellfire and imprison them in eternal dark.

There were sinister tricks going on at the Opera Populaire, and Raoul was only too aware of that. But no-one who had been present in the managers' office on the memorable morning of the notes had any doubt as to the purely human agency behind it all — indeed, Carlotta had contrived to regard the Vicomte with continuing suspicion for weeks. It did not amuse Raoul in the least, but he had to admit she had a point. Whoever was sending the messages, after all, appeared to hold a consuming interest in Christine's success... but those same manipulations, despite everything Raoul could do, were serving quite calmly and cold-bloodedly to drive Christine Daaé out of her mind.

"O.G." was a man like any other. A man whose pen sputtered, and whose nib had left an unmistakable blot in his hastily-penned threats to the _prima donna_ ; Raoul had gained a glimpse of that letter as it lay on André's desk, where he had barely forestalled Meg Giry from abstracting it for her own investigations during the confusion. (It occurred to him forcibly that with the aid of a small and agile accomplice one could set up a most effective haunting.)

There was nothing supernatural about O.G.'s notes, and still less about his aims. It was extortion plain and simple: no ghosts that Raoul had ever heard of demanded envelopes of banknotes as their due, even if they might on occasion shake a chandelier or two or clank their chains to express displeasure at the mortals they'd left behind. Quite how Carlotta's mishap had been managed, Raoul was not sure — but he was quite confident that it had involved no infernal influence from beyond the grave.

If it had been any other singer, he would have pitied her more. But he had to admit that, despite the general dismay of the moment, there had been a certain vicarious pleasure in seeing the 'toad' jibe to the innocent Christine thrown back in Carlotta's face.

He did not care for Carlotta, and if he were to be quite honest Messrs Firmin and André did not greatly appeal to him either; there was a limit to how much indignation he could summon up on their behalf. Raoul disliked blackmail and blackmailers quite as much as the next man, but the combination of threats and lunatic behaviour — from all sides — that had been going on since he became involved with the Opera was distasteful enough that under any other circumstances he might simply have shrugged his shoulders and withdrawn altogether.

But if that was what O.G. wanted, then the unknown had made a big mistake. In this vendetta against the Opera, he'd chosen to target Christine Daaé. And there was no way in heaven or earth that Raoul was going to walk away and let him milk Christine's imagination for nightmares at the cost of her peace of mind and perhaps of her very sanity. Raoul was not going to let the girl he loved be driven mad by the spectre of fear itself.

~o~

Christine had darted ahead again, driven by desperate haste. It seemed they had been climbing forever, and Raoul remembered with a jolt the desecrated stage below, with its swinging corpse, and the abandoned performance. Christine was to go on again as Countess in just a few minutes. This was folly, wild folly. They could not stay up here.

He drew breath to call to her, more than half winded by the stairs; but there came the scrape of a latch from above, and then a flood of fading daylight as the door to the roof came open, and the prospect of being free of the confines of those narrow walls was abruptly too much to resist. He hurried up the last few steps after her, finding a smile for her worried eyes as she glanced back before stooping to pass the low doorway out onto the leads. A gust of wind caught her cloak and whirled it momentarily across her face like a wing of shadow reaching out between them, and Raoul thrust down an instant's unreasoning panic of his own.

The first thing was to comfort Christine out of the almost hysterical state she was in. She'd had a shock; but he was here with her now, and he would never, ever let anything hurt her, be it real or imagined. And there was one thing, at least, of which Raoul was absolutely certain. There was no Phantom of the Opera.


End file.
